It's amazing how things work sometimes.

Tuesday night I have a little pain in my chest when I breathe, but I had come home to a house covered in cat spit up, so I wrote it off as exhaustion and went to bed. The next day, I couldn't walk across the hall to the meeting room without gasping for air. I just thought it was a chest cold, or maybe bronchitis, so I told my boss I was heading to the Urgent Care for some antibiotics and maybe an inhaler, and would be back in a few hours.

Not exactly.

The doctor liked neither my breathing nor my history, so he ordered EKG and a CT-Angiogram. The EKG didn't show anything. The CT scan showed multiple clots on my heart and lungs. One ambulance ride to the hospital later... a doppler of my legs didn't show anything in there, and a sonogram of my heart didn't show anything. So we started the blood thinner cycle, I go on a heart monitor, and I started thinking about how I was going to have to get off of the hormones and start menstruating again, which sucks.

Friday afternoon Dr. Albert, brother of the Dr. Albert who's fixed my guts the last few years, comes in with a bad look on his face. Apparently my heart stops beating for 3 - 4 seconds at a time. Next thing I know, I'm getting a pace maker put in.

Yes, a pace maker. At 31. For probably the rest of my life.

I have noticed some improvements already, in blood flow and coloring. The only concern left over is that my heart rate seems to hover around 120 beats per minute.

I don't know how much longer I'll be here, probably a few more days until my blood is thin enough for them. We won't talk about money and paychecks.

But, if I hadn't been in here for a blood clot, I never would have known.